


Denial

by Chloe_at_Eleusis



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, sparrabeth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:19:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chloe_at_Eleusis/pseuds/Chloe_at_Eleusis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Will would have married her...married her, and loved her, and lived with the fact that Elizabeth also loved Jack.</p><p>But he could not live with the fact that she loved Jack Sparrow, and had killed him anyway.<br/>::Incomplete/On indefinite hiatus::</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: No idea. Let's assume it's R until I find differently.  
> Ship: J/E, eventually. Past W/E.

_**Disclaimer:** Do you really need me to tell you that I'm not Disney?_

* * *

“No?”  
  
“NO.”  
  
“No. Thought not. Pity though, Lizzie. Do-” blackedged teeth glittered at her in the barest hint of the half-drunken, erotic snarl that passed for Captain Jack Sparrow’s smile nowadays- “consider carefully, darling.”  
  
How could a phrase that contained only one sibilant sound like one long hiss?  
  
Her lips parted to voice her negative once again and abruptly the beringed hand which had been lazily toying with a tankard handle hovered delicately in front of her face. She stopped, forgetting words, breath, everything, as the long, dirty, hot- dear God, even his fingers gave off so much _heat_ \- middle finger bent forward, ever so slightly, to rest on the center of her opened bottom lip, stroking downward, pulling slightly.  
  
Her lungs, forgotten, betrayed her and her breath gusted out over his hand. Sparrow closed his eyes at the hot rush, his lips closing over a quick, indrawn breath. When he opened them it was as though that quick breath had pumped over whatever ire-laden embers burned in his eyes when he looked at her.  
  
Elizabeth’s face went hot from scalp to neck as she looked into the livid, leaping blaze, and she could barely breathe as Jack Sparrow said flatly, “You have twenty-four hours until the _Pearl_ weighs anchor. Decide before then.  
  
You will get no free passage, Miss Swann, on the _Pearl_ or elsewhere, and nowhere else will you get an offer of safety.”  
  
He leaned forward, center finger still gently trapping her lip. “Weigh your pride with your life, Lizzie. Your berth will be waiting for you.”  
  
He stood and tipped the remnants of the tankard into his mouth in a mockery of a salute. The clang of it hitting the table was no louder than the blood in her ears and he curled a corner of his mouth at her, glittering gaze slanting briefly downward into hers before he strolled away.  
  
Elizabeth let out a long, shaky breath that felt like it contained half the warmth in her body. In the heat of Tortuga her fingertips felt cold as she pressed them into her face.  
  
Jack was right. She had no real choice.  
  
She would have to earn her passage to England, where a future as a poor cousin or possibly a housemaid awaited her, by working as a cabin boy on the _Black Pearl_. On a ship captained by a man she’d murdered, and whose first mate had reviled her, broken their engagement, because of it. She stared into her half-full tankard of rum for a full half minute before setting her jaw and taking a hearty swallow.  
  
Staying half-drunk seemed to make everything so much easier for Captain Jack Sparrow. She’d see what a full-on inebriation did for her situation.  
  
After all, what more did she have to lose?


	2. Chapter 2

Dark, dark, dark.  
  
Like where Jack was.  
  
No. No, where Jack was wasn’t dark. There was light, a chilly green light which wavered in intensity between day and night. Light, but no warmth, no breath, no rest.  
  
But at least there would be no more pain.  
  
Elizabeth shuddered. In the red of her clenched eyelids the horrific maw of the Kraken gaped wide, edged and toothed and glinting. How long had Jack lived? How long had he survived inside that razored hell?  
  
How much torment had he endured before his heart failed, before he was crushed, torn, rent asunder-  
  
“No! JACK!”  
  
She jerked awake, stomach muscles clenching at the tightness of her fetal curl, gasping his name to the rhythm of her breath like a pleading, keening paean. “Jack, Jack, Jack…”  
  
She pushed herself up on the narrow pallet, legs flat against the floor, squinting under the door to discern whether the sun had risen. This small, hidden closet which was all she could afford had no outlet to the open air, but there were plenty of boots thudding past and she felt the increased heat that told her the sun was above the horizon.  
  
Her last day in Cayonne had dawned. Elizabeth reached for the two-thirds-full bottle of rum she’d swiped from beside one of many slumbering inebriates in the tavern last night.  
  
She’d spend that twelve hours shopping with what little money remained to her- and getting good and drunk.

* * *

“You have some objection, young Turner?”  
  
Will Turner sighed, his voice immeasurably weary. “No, of course not, Captain. She has no other option.”  
  
Nodding, automatically punctuating his assent with one of his characteristically fluid, barely-controlled gestures, said Captain turned back to his tankard, his stomach swirling at the words. _No other option._ She didn’t. She had nothing- not home nor father nor fiancé nor money nor protection.  
  
No protection except he and Will Turner and Joshamee Gibbs.  
  
He hated it. Hated seeing the fierce, proud, beautiful Elizabeth Swann reduced to this. It made his gut roil until his beloved rum did nothing but unsettle it all the more.  
  
Jack Sparrow hated her too, at this moment. Hated her for having been stronger than both he and Will. Hated his first mate for having reduced her to this because of it, because of him. Hated himself most of all for being the prompt and supporter of her destruction.  
  
What a bloody sodding mess.  
  
He owed Will Turner, Joshamee Gibbs, Hector Barbossa, and Elizabeth Swann his life.  
  
Hector and Elizabeth had no claim over him; they had struggled on his behalf in repayment of their own treacheries against him. But Will and Joshamee- they had owed him nothing, and yet had come to him with the other two, risking their lives and souls at the edge of the world; and together the four of them had wrested him whole and alive from the cold hell in which he had served.  
  
Captain Jack Sparrow owed Will Turner and Joshamee Gibbs his protection, his loyalty- a currency nearly impossible to earn, and unbreakable once held.  
  
He would not break it. He would honor his debt. He would do right by them.  
  
He would be needing another drink.


	3. Chapter 3

Will tipped his head back, rested his hands on his forehead, heels of his palms pressing his eyes shut.  
  
He had the room next door to Elizabeth’s tiny closet; was paying, unknown to Elizabeth, almost half the fee for it. Had heard her wake, crying Jack’s name, as she had woken every day since she had consigned Jack to the deeps.  
  
She’d woken screaming this morning; her fear had rung through the walls and floor of the small cupboard in which she slept.  
  
Will was glad.  
  
He much preferred it when she awoke screaming. It meant she hadn’t woken with a choked moan, her breathing fast and broken, whimpering Jack Sparrow’s name, writhing on her thin pallet, clothing pulled tight and askew as she twisted in Jack’s dreamworld grip…  
  
Will felt himself harden at the remembered vision and cursed viciously, opening his eyes and reaching for the flagon of cold water in front of him. He had woken to her sighing moans three days after she had fed Jack to the Kraken, watching her body undulate against the prison of her clothing from the chair beside her bunk, and known then that he could never marry this woman.  
  
Not because she wanted Jack. Will Turner had loved Elizabeth ever since he was ten years old, and he could have married her, even knowing that she wanted Jack. Even knowing that she loved Jack.  
  
And she did love Jack; Will was under no illusions about Elizabeth Swann’s feelings for the infamous buccaneer. He had known her for almost their entire lives, and he knew that it was where Elizabeth’s heart went that her body would follow- witness her expedition across a darkened sea, under the noses of an undead pirate crew and a detachment of Her Majesty’s Navy, to find him when he had been in danger. She would never have desired someone she did not also love.  
  
And Will would have married her anyway, married her and been happy with the piece of her fierce and indomitable spirit with which she had gifted him. He would have married her, and loved her, and lived with the fact that Elizabeth also loved Jack.  
  
But he could not live with the fact that she loved Jack Sparrow, and had killed him anyway.  
  
She had killed him to save everyone else and herself from the Kraken and from Jones’ wrath; and Will could not live with the fact that she had fed Jack to the most fearsome monster of the depths, had watched him be devoured, had cried for him in her sleep and had risked her soul to save him- and had never said the words “I’m sorry” to Jack or to anyone else.  
  
Elizabeth Swann loved Jack Sparrow, and she had murdered him, and for all her torment she was not sorry for her actions. She would do the same thing again.  
  
It was beyond comprehension to Will. Beyond bearing. He could never have done the same to her, not if it had meant sacrificing the _Pearl_ and her crew and Sparrow and himself and his father’s soul to the frigid, pitiless grasp of Davy Jones. Never.  
  
Even if she herself did not recognize her emotions, Will did.  
  
And so Will Turner could never marry her, knowing as he did that Elizabeth Swann’s love looked nothing like any human love he had ever known.


	4. Chapter 4

_“Pirate.”_  
  
The glint of teeth, the curl of lip, the lowered lashes as he had watched her mouth: it was the last true smile she had seen from him.  
  
Elizabeth closed her eyes against the sinking Caribbean sun. The word had been an amused murmur, nearly a caress. In that moment- and entirely unlike the half-joking, self-indulgent lust he’d shown her before- Jack had wanted her completely. Body, mind, soul- he’d seen it all at the moment the manacle closed, and the sight of her determination, her cruelty, had made his eyes heavy with desire, his tongue linger on the single word, his mouth part, waiting for hers as she moved back towards him...  
  
She heaved a sigh and opened her eyes to the overwhelming onslaught of color and movement that was the Cayonne marketplace. Tortuga’s sounds rose and ebbed with the light, a separate tide, and one from which Elizabeth was marooned; the pulse of the lessening sounds beat underneath her feet, but her ears still rang with Jack’s near-whisper.   
  
She took a single sip out of her full rum flask; purchase of the small glass bottle had taken half of her remaining coin, but she needed a way to make sure she always had part of her rum ration with her. Blunting her desire, dulling her memories, would work. She would make it work- for the duration of the voyage. The rest would come once she set foot on the pebbled English strand.   
  
No more rum for now. The cover of night, once the _Pearl_ was well underway, would be soon enough; Elizabeth had no doubt she’d need some to sleep.  
  
The thought was enough to bring a grimace, almost a smile, as she capped the flask. Perhaps not a pirate in name, or in occupation. But body and soul she had had the will, the intent, the steel to do what must be done. Though she might have nothing else, she yet had her self-command; time enough to catalog her losses outside of it later. She made herself start for the docks.   
  
She and Jack had that in common too: worrying about the rest later.

* * *

Joshamee Gibbs was curious.  
  
It was not a trait of his that got much chance for exercise- sailing as Captain Jack Sparrow’s first mate had, in fact, taught him to repress it whenever possible. Such repression served to prolong a man’s life more often than not.  
  
It simply wasn’t possible right now.  
  
Will and the girl were not meant for each other. The boy resembled a piece of rock crystal Gibbs had seen once: translucent, beautiful, clean lines veined with gold. Pure, yes, precious, yes, hard, yes- but brittle.   
  
Elizabeth Swann was coal-iron steel, supple and tensile and edged and deadly, and Will Turner would have broken himself against her, over and over again, until there was nothing of that clarity left.   
  
He had done both of them a favor when he had told Will of the shackle which adorned the mast, though admittedly he had not been and still was not of a mind to do the girl many favors. He’d had a soft spot for the girl, having known her as a child, but much of it had eroded with the sight of Jack wiggling his way from that manacle only to face the implacable gullet of the sea’s avenger. Miss Swann could take care of herself far better than young Turner, better in fact than anyone he’d met- other than Jack Sparrow.  
  
Captain Jack Sparrow was the only man Gibbs knew who could stand up to the lifetime of collisions awaiting the man who paired with Elizabeth Swann. Jack’s damascus-steel temperament, multicolored, multilayered, folded and beaten so many times in the fires which had shaped him, would sharpen against Elizabeth’s strokes. He would hone her already-killing edge into something which would cut even those who looked at it- and she would do the same for him.  
  
The problem with that scenario being, of course, that he and Will Turner were the only two who knew the true nature of Sparrow's and Swann's feelings for each other. The fact that neither had named their emotions, even to themselves, was yet another obstacle; and it went without saying that neither Gibbs nor Turner had the least intent of interfering in nor rectifying the situation… hence Gibbs’ curiosity.   
  
Whatever happened, the voyage would certainly be interesting.


End file.
